Ulster continued their abysmal run away from home with a third consecutive defeat to Wasps on Sunday.
The loss ended Ulster’s European run before the quarter-final stages for the fourth consecutive season after Les Kiss’ side entered the afternoon as Pool 1 leaders.
While another European adventure has ended abruptly for Ulster in the Les Kiss era, their latest loss comes on the back of back-to-back bonus point hidings from Leinster and Connacht.
The one-sided maulings were interrupted by wins at home to Munster and La Rochelle, but again, this Ulster side were badly exposed away from home.
Ulster have now lost six out of nine games this season outside of Belfast, and while Sunday’s 26-7 loss to Wasps was far from their most disappointing away defeat, it could prove to be the most significant for Les Kiss as he faces mounting pressure to keep his job.
Needing only a win to top the pool and advance to the knockout stages, the game started badly for Ulster and failed to improve from there.
The northerners lost Jacob Stockdale to a potential dead leg after 18 minutes, Louis Ludik to a head injury after 33 minutes, and their bottle thereafter.
Wasps did a brilliant job at limiting Charles Piutau to just nine runs for 27 metres, as Ulster’s only score of the game came via an intercepted pass from Christian Wade.
Ulster benefited from a similar situation with Nick Timoney last weekend, and managed to take advantage of their opportunities to earn a much needed win, but the same cracks continued to appear.
Their forward pack took another beating, with Guy Thompson scoring the first try of the game after Ulster conceded yet another try from a maul.
The Ulster pack managed to get a good first hit on the Wasps maul, but as has been the case for the last month, they were brushed to one side as a pod of three Wasps players drove their way over the line.
Ulster conceded more turnovers, they lost the possession battle, they lost more rucks and line-outs, and they had to make more tackles. Losing the forward battle has been at the root of a lot of their problems this season.
Losing Stockdale and Ludik were significant blows, but Ulster’s loss to the Wasps forwards was more telling.
However, their linespeed was good, and while they made 86% of their tackles, it was the tackles that they didn’t make that ultimately cost them, particularly on Tom Cruse’s try.
With Ulster pressing fast out of the line, Wasps fly-half Danny Cipriani did a brilliant job at exploiting the space in behind the defence, picking out hooker Tom Cruse with a beautiful chip kick.
The try gave the hosts a seven-point lead heading into half-time, but when Springbok full-back Willie Le Roux crossed for Wasps third try seven minutes after the restart, it was curtains for Ulster from there.
Le Roux benefited from an Ulster turnover and raced to the corner to score, taking Ulster’s dreams with him as he slid through the mud.
Ulster were outgunned and outsmarted, and while they’ve suffered worse losses, their latest defeat showed some of the same issues that we’ve seen all season.
The issues are big, but the defeats away from home have been even bigger and have left a sour taste in a campaign that now has the potential to derail, a real possibility with their conductor Christian Leali’ifano hopping of the train.
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